In 1891, Nikola Tesla demonstrated the principles of wireless energy transmission in a lecture before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Columbia College in New York City. Using high-frequency alternating currents and specially designed coils later known as Tesla coils, Tesla showed that electrical energy could be transmitted through space without wires, illuminating gas-discharge tubes held in his hands across the lecture hall. This demonstration in New York introduced the concept of wireless power to the world.

Tesla's wireless energy demonstrations contributed to the fin-de-siecle literary fascination with invisible forces and the dissolution of material boundaries. The image of a man holding glowing tubes illuminated by invisible electrical currents resonated with Symbolist poetry's interest in the luminous and the unseen. Tesla himself became a figure of mythic proportions in later literature, appearing as a character in works by Paul Auster, Samantha Hunt, and numerous poets, embodying the Promethean archetype of the scientist who dares to command the fundamental forces of nature.